Crank up your weight loss

Give it five more

The way to work out if you're going at a sustainable pace is to try the talk test: if you can't string a sentence together you are training too hard and will burn out too quickly. Think of your training level as a scale from one to 10  one being lying in the sauna and 10 suffering a collapse. You should be training somewhere between six and eight.

Find your pace

Going as fast as the bloke next to you is not the way to measure if you're going at a decent fat-burning pace. The right pace for you is the one that means you keep going long enough to do some good  not the one that has you hanging on to the water fountain trying not to be sick after five minutes.

Push yourself to do just five more minutes of aerobic exercise at the end of any session. The reward for this tiny extra effort, three times a week, is an added 10,000 calories burned a year  that's 3lb of fat you'll lose on top of the stuff your workout is already knocking off.

Compete

Hold a contest over a month with a gym buddy where the person who performs the most workouts wins. Make the prize worthwhile to ensure that you both keep turning up.

Go in reverse

Compete on the treadmill with a gym partner  but make each workout a reverse time contest. Whoever gets off last wins a point.

Forget time

Don't do your workout according to how long you spend on the rower or treadmill, do it according to calories burned. That way, the harder you work, the sooner your torture is over.

Make changes

Your body gets used to the workout you do, so transform it to push your muscles harder and burn more fat. Try playing basketball, hill walking or kayaking to shock your body into shedding more pounds.

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